Fallin

When the weather turned frigid, and the jackets and hats were sought from storage, we made our pilgrimage to the mountains. This weekend, Alvis and I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast near Woodstock with incredible views of the Catskills. It was a short weekend--we left after my night shift was over Friday morning (I napped in the car) and sadly returned Sunday morning for work. But while we were there we packed in as much as we could. With as much folk music packed on our iPods as is legally allowed, we drove through the most exquisite, truly peak foliage I have ever seen. It warms the soul. We headed to a nearby apple farm where we picked enough apples to sustain a family of 4 for weeks on end. We drank warm apple cider and walked through pumpkin patches. Mmmm. Mountains=Good.






ps. I made homemade apple pie with our pickins. It was awesome. (as I've said before, I'm very modest).

Very posh

This summer, I lived the dream. I summered. I summered in The Hamptons. It was a beautiful thing. After work one night, me, Alvis, and three other friends got in our Zip Car and took a three day weekend out to The Hamptons. Our friend is a personal trainer to the rich and got an offer to use one of his client's beach houses (yes, he has multiple houses in the Hamptons, totally unfair) for a long weekend. Umm, not a tough decision. So we played croquet, bocce, corn hole, frisbee, grilled out, beached out, and made s'mores. But I couldn't find P Diddy's house---strange that my invitation for his big blowout party got lost in the mail...

I secretly love my white coat

So far, 2nd year has been treating me fairly well. It's the year that we are considered the "critical care resident", meaning we are handed all the patients that are most critical in the ED. Usually, there is only one 2nd year scheduled per shift, so, it can be a bit overwhelming at times. However, it just confirms that I really do love this job. Ok, sometimes I hate it. But usually I love it. Yesterday,I was sewing up a guy's face who was handcuffed to the stretcher and accompanied by NYPD, and I told him that if he didn't stop hitting on me, I would sew his lips shut. I think he believed me. This job is fun. I did a lumbar punture (spinal tap) on a woman the other day who, mid procedure, with me holding a very long spinal needle in her back, started saying "I'm going to turn up my amp to 11...it's one louder". I love that my patient quoted Spinal Tap while I was giving her a spinal tap. Classic. And just the other day, when I told my little 90 year old patient (who has no medical problems, and is more mentally alert than most 20 year olds) that she needed to be admitted to the hospital she exclaimed with surprising force "son of a bitch"! I couldn't stop laughing. (Don't worry, she was fine, just pulled a muscle and couldn't make it up to her 2nd floor apartment).

I also realized how much I loved ER after doing inpatient medicine for a month. I had my ICU rotation recently, which was probably the most traumatizing experience of my life...I am not meant for call. I am a very non-confrontational, easy to get along with person (yes, I am also very modest...), but when you have been up for 30 hours and the only doctor in charge of 15 of the sickest patients in the hospital, all alone and exhausted, and a nurse pages you every 2 minutes to put in an order for tylenol, the nasty in me comes out. And when you have to tell a woman that her 35 year old sister just died and there was nothing you could do to stop it, things get rough. The only good thing about the ICU was that I got to wear my white coat (the official, long white coat with my name and title inscribed on it, that I longed for as a med student when I was stuck wearing the required stupid short white coat.) In the ER, we are far too cool to wear a white coat. It's basically just scrub tops and cargo pants/scrub bottoms for us. We take pride in not wanting to look too polished. Secretly, I love my white coat...but the ICU is not worth it...

The other coast

Alvis and I are exploring the west...we have this strange desire to migrate to the other side of the country after residency, so we thought maybe we should explore it before moving out there. We want to check out Boulder, CO, Northern CA, Oregon, and Washington. Maybe we'll love it, maybe we'll hate it. So we made our first tour last month--to San Francisco and Sonoma. San Francisco was great--a very cool city. I love living in the city, but I don't think I loved San Francisco enough to put up with the negatives of living in a city that big (parking, expense, tiny living quarters). But, I am convinced that if anyone walks that city for long, they will have the most amazing buns of steel. Hills...



After a few days in San Fransisco we drove up to wine country. The drive was incredible. We rented a convertible (which turned out to be brilliant, thanks Alvis) and stopped in to several wineries recommended by our favorite wine shop in Manhattan.



I don't know much about wine, but I tried to muster all my confidence and gave my best "Sideways" impersonation as I turned down the Merlots. I did Paul Giamatti proud. I swirled with the best of them--and I don't think I spilled too much...
So, as far as future moving plans go, Sonoma doesn't quite cut it either. Not that we wouldn't love to live on a vineyard, we just don't have the family lineage it takes to own one. Or the money. And I'm pretty sure we would make really crappy wine. But on our last day we took a drive straight to the coast, which was winding and breathtaking. We drove through rolling hills with views of the Pacific and found heaven on earth. Living in the most serene and visually stunning landscape with the city of San Francisco an hour away? Sounds good to us. However, I recently read that the real estate we loved so much was not necessarily too expensive, but just never goes on the market. Because no one ever wants to leave. We'll have to see what we can do about that...But hey, we still haven't checked out Oregon, Washington, or Colorado yet. Stay tuned...

Why are you here?

This is for Megan...So, the ER has it's good times and it's bad times, but it never disappoints in the entertainment division. I've hesitated on telling my ER stories for a few reasons. For one thing, there are too many ridiculous things that have happened in the ER this past year to try and compile together. Also, in the beginning, I found my work life a bit overwhelming, and was happy to leave it behind the second I left the hospital. I didn't like talking about work when I got home-- I was pretty good at compartmentalizing. Some days are harder than others, but it has definitely gotten more manageable over the year. More days than not, I come home thinking how cool my job is. But, with that being said, there is always an element of the ridiculous in my daily work life. This is not a sophisticated life. It's a life in which I have actually had to have a patient restrained and then put a facemask on him, so he will stop spitting at me. It's a life in which a 65 year old stinky female patient of mine yelled at me for taking too long to write a prescription for her "emergency" vaginal itching at 3:30 am while I was trying to save a patient who wasn't breathing (actual emergency). It's a life in which we joke about our "ER handshake" being a rectal exam (yeah, don't go to the ER and complain of severe abdominal pain...). But, it is pretty cool to do some of the things we get to do. I thought I would kick off the ER stories with a contest we recently started amongst our residents. Each month, we pool together the best triage complaints we've seen all month. No names are given, just the "chief complaint", the statement that explains why they have come to the ER (this, along with vital signs, is all we get when we pick up a chart to go see a patient). Some of the big contenders this month were:

1. "Someone put something in my weed"
2. "I'm drunk and I need a woman"
3. "I shit myself"
4. "I shouldn't be here"
5. "I was hit in the head by manequin legs that were thrown from a window"
6. "I had a dream I was having a heart attack, so I woke up and took Nitroglycerine, and now I have a headache" (a common reaction to Nitroglycerine)

Those were the big winners this month...we'll see what next month has to offer...

A quick summary

It has been such a long time since I've posted--so long, in fact, that I may be sending this out to the void because probably no one checks our page anymore. But, when we miss our old friends it's nice to read their stories, check up on them. So maybe one or two of you want to check up on us too...

I feel like so much has happened this year (obviously, I'm still in academia-- since I am referring to the "school" calendar year, which for residency, is July to July), yet I find it difficult to really expand on any one thing. The truth is, I can't believe how fast it has flown by. My last post was right after my first vacation in intern year. I still find my job as overwhelming and terrifying as I did back then, but I am surprised by how much more manageable it seems. "The Match" was last week for the incoming class of interns--meaning we have now hired our incoming 1st years. I will still be a 1st year until July 1, but it made me realize how soon I'll be a 2nd year resident. It's scary how fast it went.

So, since my last post a lot has happened. Nothing ground-breaking. No babies. But we've had some pretty good times with each other and our friends in this crazy city. So here are some highlights (ok, they are the only events in which a camera was present--otherwise, I would be lost in a sea of memories all afternoon trying to sort them out).

In chronological order:

We saw the last series at the original Yankee stadium



The Self Family tailgate grew a LOT. Our small contribution, a beer pong table...





Alvis met a new Hoyer



The Village Halloween Parade (John and Jim)



Thanksgiving with Lori



Around this time, Niki came to visit, but since there are no pictures, I will have to pretend like it didn't happen...

Christmas with the Fam...look closely, they're all there



A visit from the Huffines



A trip to Hershey, PA to see Dave as Sweeney Todd in the Broadway National Tour (of Sweeney Todd)





We residents took a ski trip



We got Guitar Hero (and yes, I rock)





I dyed my hair again (I know...I don't have a picture of my sister visiting, and I have a picture of this?)



So there is the brief synopsis of our recent lives. I will try to post more often. But more than likely I will stop for another 6 months and just continue to enjoy the blogs of everyone else.

Mountain People

I haven't posted in forever...I usually only have one day off a week, and that is spent away from the apartment in order to feel like I have some kind of life. But I had some vacation time a month ago--Alvis and I wanted to get out of the city for a weekend, so we rented a car and headed to the Catskill Mountains. The beautiful bed and breakfast we stayed in seemed light years away from the city, but was a quick 2.5 hour car ride (including traffic). Ever since living in West Virginia, I have come to really love the outdoors (I didn't know this in Florida, because it was too hot to even walk to the mailbox without sweating profusely). We frequently went hiking, rock climbing, and many other tree hugging activities. So with a weekend off, getting back to the mountains sounded really refreshing. We went to pick up "our" car for the weekend, which of course wasn't ready for us when we got there. The cars were coming in from Jersey and were super late, so instead of getting out of the city at 2:30, we got out around 4:00--just in time for the Friday afternoon rush. But, no worries, we were headed for the boonies, where people aren't in such a hurry, and the car horns only blow when there is a cow obstructing the path. When we pulled up to the B&B, the fog was settling in, and there was peace and quiet. Ahh, at last...




After breakfast the next morning we hit the trails. We did a short morning hike through some waterfalls then had some lunch, which I almost lost on our next excursion. We took a skyride (a ski lift) up one of the mountains which was very steep...I'm a little afraid of heights...



After making it safely back on solid ground we headed out on another trail. It was about a 6 mile hike round trip with some decent climbing involved (ok, no ropes were necessary, but it was a good climb up). When we finally reached the top, we were greeted with great views and even more peace and quiet...we were the only ones up there, and it was a great feeling.



The next day we were going to go mountain biking, but opted for a long, winding drive through the mountains instead. We even made it to Woodstock, which just proves what tree huggers we were becoming. I think that's the wrong kind of hippie though...no free love or anything...
Alvis and I often ask ourselves (and lots of other people ask us too...like our parents...) where we see ourselves after residency. It always seems to come down to water or mountains. After this weekend, score one for the mountains...


this is my "please stop taking my picture" face...